Agents of Change: Blue Coat

Jack Loo |
Jan. 28, 2013

Singapore’s IDA unveiled its Infocomm Technology Roadmap outlining nine technology trends that will shape the future. We asked various enterprise IT heavyweights for their perspectives on the Roadmap, and next up, we have security specialist Blue Coat.

In late August 2012, the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) unveiled the latest edition of its Infocomm Technology Roadmap (ITR) to chart technology trends that will figure strongly in three to five years.

Computerworld Singapore is taking the opportunity to set the ITR as the foundation layer for its year-ahead feature. Heavyweights in the enterprise IT space are talking about their perspectives on the Roadmap; the industry developments and customer demands that they foresee happening in the specific themes that these technology giants operate in.

In the fourth part of a regular feature, Blue Coat Systems is talking about its 2013 product and services roadmap, industry developments, customer demands and case study scenarios. The spokesperson is Jon Andresen, Chief Product Evangelist, Blue Coat Systems.

Cyber Security

In the last six months, Blue Coat Security Labs has tracked that the number of malnets on the Internet has tripled from 500 to more than 1,500 with attacks now averaging 3.4 million per day. In the last year we have seen a 240 percent increase in the number of malicious websites, and we expect this trend to continue as cybercrime continues find innovative ways to get to the users. Customers will demand better malware protection as well as data loss protection. They would also expect the protection coverage to include remote, mobile users.

In response, organisations are likely to add more technology to their existing architecture, for example, next generation firewalls, to combat new cyber threats. However, these technologies focus more on network security and not web security. It is advisable for customers to deploy purpose build web security solutions that are more secured.

Blue Coat offers the next generation web secure gateway with unified web security architecture. We adopt cloud technology instead of premise technology. This provides advance web security for users in every location across all devices.

Social media

Blue Coat's next generation web secure gateway offers granular web application and social media controls. It is available as an appliance solution, a cloud software server solution or a hybrid of both.

Organisations that use social media for their business will continue to increase. From gathering mobile intelligence to increasing brand loyalty, social media is no longer just for recreation but an important tool for business.

Users will demand to have access to the various social media platforms less the security issues and control by the IT managers.